Not sleeping makes you stressed and stress makes you lose sleep (which leads to more stress…)

Here’s some bad news: sleep deprivation and stress both play a role in struggling with weight loss and health problems.

Most people who are trying to lose weight never stop to think about the effects that missing sleep can have on their body.

Some people think that staying up longer can help them lose weight because they might be able to burn more calories. In fact, the opposite is true: a good night’s sleep actually helps you achieve a healthy weight, while a lack of sleep makes losing weight more difficult. (And people don’t realize one of the clearest truths about sleeping – when you’re asleep, you’re not eating!)

Not only does sleeping refresh your brain – so you can make clear decisions about food choices the next day – sleep (or a lack thereof), affects your metabolism, your hormones, and your immune system. All together these have a powerful affect on your health and weight.

Consider the following:

– A large study that followed more than 68,000 women for 16 years showed that women who slept less than 7 hours per night put on more weight than those who slept at least 7 hours. Additionally, women who slept only 5 hours per night were 33% more likely to gain significant weight (33 pounds or more).

– Research has shown that about 7 hours of QUALITY sleep are necessary for weight control and good health. Chronic sleep deprivation accelerates the onset and increases the symptoms of aging – including memory loss, high blood pressure, diabetes, and obesity.

– Less than 4 hours of sleep in one night, or chronic sleep loss, has been shown to have a negative effect on carbohydrate metabolism. Put simply, carbs make you fatter if you’re missing sleep!

– A study found that adults who slept 4 hours or less per night are 73% more likely to be obese than those who slept between 7 and 9 hours per night. Sleeping between 5 and 6 hours per night leads to a 50% greater risk of being overweight and a 23% greater risk of being obese.

Missing sleep occasionally can be overcome, missing sleep every night (or almost every night!) is what starts to damage your body.

What you need to do is make a plan for getting at least 7 hours of restful sleep every night. Here are some tips to help:

No TV near bedtime and ABSOLUTELY no TV in the bedroom

Make sure your bedroom has good window coverings (for darkness), is uncluttered, and well ventilated.

Guided imagery, progressive relaxation, meditation, and breathing exercises can all help with sleep.

Caffeine interferes with sleep (it is a stimulant and also affects your production of the sleep hormone melatonin). Time your intake so you can fall asleep easily. This might mean no caffeine after 3pm, or it might mean no caffeine after 11am. Everyone is different.

Try using a sleep mask for perfect darkness.

Invest in a comfortable pillow and mattress.

Get a quality alarm with a back up battery so you won’t stress about sleeping in.

Have white noise. A fan, air purifier, or white noise machine are all good choices.

Put blue light filters on all electronic screens in your home. The blue light from monitors, laptops, and TVs simulates sunlight and blocks the release of melatonin.

Paint and decorate your bedroom with serene and restful colors.

Practice regular rhythms of sleep. Go to bed and wake up at the same time each day.

Keep your room dust-free. Keep pets out of the bedroom at all times and consider getting an air filtering system.

Get exposure to sunlight on your body and face as soon as possible after waking. This helps tell your body it is time to wake up and enhances your sleep rhythm.

Get tested. The most common and underdiagnosed sleep disorder is sleep apnea. If you experience excessive daytime sleepiness, fatgiue, snoring, or have been seen to momentarily stop breathing during the night, get tested by a sleep lab. (Sleep apnea greatly raises your risk of hypertension and heart disease)

Getting enough quality sleep will not only make you healthier, help you de-stress, and speed up weight loss, it will recharge you so that you can enjoy everything that life has to offer.

Traditional cardio training doesn’t have enough intensity to to change your metabolism – yet is usually done in high enough volumes to cause large amounts of muscle tissue destruction.

“Cardio” doesn’t work for fat loss and changing your body… And it may cause you to lose the most productive and protective tissue in your body.

If you insist on doing regular cardio, make sure you have heavy resistance training sessions to convince your body to hold onto its precious muscle. And do as little cardio as possible all the same.

Well, if you can’t do cardio to lose weight, what CAN you do?

Exercise below that cardio threshold. Easy walks, mellow bike rides, relaxing hikes. These aren’t intense enough to cause you to start breaking down muscle tissue, they still burn calories, and they encourage recovery from higher intensity training. Not a lot of metabolic changes from this type of exercise, but it’s fun, easy, and helps. So go for a stroll, dang it!

Use interval training. High efforts interspersed with low efforts have beaten traditional cardio in the three most important arenas: research has proven intervals are better, experience has shown intervals to be better, and intervals are just plain more fun. There’s tons of info on interval training on this site. (If you want to get started now, peep this: Beginner Interval Workouts)

Use circuit training. Best of both worlds. You get to do resistance exercises in a series fashion to ramp up your metabolism and calorie burn while building toned muscle.

Fix your nutrition. If your food and resistance training is spot on, you probably won’t even need to to either type of “cardio” – easy or intervals – to get lean. The right nutrition plan will balance your hormones, ramp your metabolism, and lead to fat loss. All without beating yourself up in running shoes.

With all of the hullabaloo about gluten lately, it’s time to answer the question “What is gluten, anyway?”

Quite simply, gluten is a gluey protein that is found in wheat and a few other grains (including barley and rye).

Gluten is the composite of a gliadin and a glutenin, which is conjoined with starch in the endosperm of various grass-related grains. Altogether, gluten is 80% of the protein found in wheat.

Modern wheat (and related grains) have been bred and genetically engineered to have more gluten.

The “glueyness” of gluten holds together bread, crackers, pastries, pizza dough, and other heavily processed carbohydrate food. It gives these bready treats a chewy softness instead of a hard graininess.

Gluten is the second most common food additive in US foods, following sugar.

Normal human digestion can’t break down the gluten proteins though. The surviving pieces of gluten come into contact with the lining of your digestive system and your immune system. When gluten encounters your immune system, there’s an immune reaction where your body recognizes the gluten protein (or protein pieces) as a foreign invader and attacks (kind of like what happens with lectins).

As a result of this immune system attack, your digestive track becomes inflamed and your villi (tiny fingerlike projections used for absorbing nutrients in your intestines) are damaged.

This villi damage from gluten affects all nutrient absorption and regular digestive processes. Once this occurs, it is harder and harder to have a normally functioning body.

Also, gluten grains cause an acidic reaction in the body, which leads to inflammation, headaches, acne, weight gain, and mental disturbances like depression and anxiety.

Some of the signs of gluten intolerance are:

Gas

Bloating

Queasiness

Abdominal cramping

Constipation

Diarrhea

Irritable Bowel Syndrome

Headaches

Migraines

Irritability

Sudden mood shifts

Aching joints

Clogged nasal passages

Dizziness

Difficulty balancing

Peripheral neuropathy (affects nerves outside the central nervous system and results in pain, weakness, tingling or numbness in the extremities)

Even if you don’t have full-on celiac disease, gluten isn’t doing your body any good. And if you have any of the symptoms of gluten sensitivity listed above, removing gluten from your diet can make a world of difference.

Gluten stays in your system causing problems for 14 days. So if you have a cheat/reward/celebration meal and want bready or baked treats, go with gluten-free alternatives. You can find gluten-free options for almost anything, from pizza crust to cake. Say you have a cheat meal that actually has gluten every 2 weeks – you’re never giving your digestive system a chance to try to recover.

Switch to a diet based on meat, leaves, and berries. Focus on natural foods and the gluten problem takes cares of itself. Note: The meat from animals fed gluten-containing grains can still cause a reaction in people with severe gluten intolerance, so choose wild or grass-fed, not just organic.

Cut the chicken thighs into bite-sized pieces and set aside. (I’ve made it with breast meat instead and it was great! Now I usually make a double batch with 2.5# breasts and 2.5# thighs)

Dice the red onion.

Use a stainless steel pot or a porcelain-covered cast iron pot. Don’t use a bare cast iron pot because the tomato paste will lead to faster rusting.

Heat the coconut oil over medium heat and add the diced red onion. Saute until the onion starts to become a little see-through.

Turn the heat down to low and add the minced garlic, cardamom, coriander, turmeric, and chili powder. Stir everything together. This is going to make your kitchen smell delicious!

(Why do I use pre-minced garlic? I’m lazy, that’s why)

Add the tomato paste and stir well. It is very thick at this point, but keep stirring it up.

Turn the heat up to medium and add the coconut milk (this is where you add the sea salt if you would like, I don’t). Stir everything really well to make a sauce.

Turn the heat to low (simmer) and add the chicken pieces. Stir well, cover, and simmer at medium-low heat for 15 minutes – until the chicken is cooked all the way through. Lift the lid and stir every few minutes to the chicken cooks evenly and nothing sticks to the pot.

When the chicken is cooked all the way through, add the grassfed butter and stir it around until the butter melts.

And then you’re all set!

(My camera doesn’t do this dish justice, it is actually BRIGHT red-orange)

When I serve this to guests, I usually speed blanch either chard or baby kale by putting the greens in a strainer in the sink, then pouring boiling water over them until they start to wilt. I use the blanched greens as a bed for the butter chicken.

My taste-testing crew all cleared their plates and went back for more! Let’s call this the end of bland diet foods

Carol, Hannah, and Margo all voted thumbs up!

If you want more delicious recipes, click the “Recipes” category on the right side of this page. And if you want a LOT of recipes, pick up Sarah’s book for yourself (It’s much cheaper on Amazon than at the book store): Everyday Paleo

Before modern chemical pesticides, nature developed its own powerful defense system: lectins.

To keep themselves from being eaten to extinction, plants evolved dangerous anti-nutrients to attack the digestive systems of the animals that fed on them. These anti-nutrients are essentially low-grade toxins – not powerful enough to kill instantly, they are more of a passive-aggressive defense. “Go ahead and eat me, I’ll mess you up.”

Lectins are a mixture of proteins and carbohydrates that can bind to almost any tissue in our bodies and start causing trouble. This “stickyness” really takes place in your small intestine, where they bind with your intestinal villi.

The result of lectins binding to your small intestine is cellular damage with a reduced ability to repair themselves, cellular death, and compromised villi. All of this leads to you developing “leaky gut” syndrome, as well as reducing your ability to absorb healthy nutrients like protein, vitamins, and minerals.

This lectin binding also leads to problems with your gut flora, the beneficial bacteria that support digestion and keeps your immune system healthy. When your good gut flora is suppressed, bad bacteria like e coli is allowed to run rampant.

(And it doesn’t take a medical degree to figure out that a leaky gut plus bad bacteria equals health problems)

When lectins are causing problems with your digestive system, your immune systems and bodily resources are all redirected to fixing these problems and won’t be able to focus on basic growth and repair processes (such as building lean muscle, metabolizing fat, repairing organs, and keeping your energy levels high).

Back to leaky gut and lectins. Once the lectins open holes in your digestive system, rogue particles are free to move around in your body and bind to anything they come across – thyroid, pancreas, kidneys, etc.

Your body then reacts to these particles (and whatever they have bonded to) as a foreign invader and attacks them. This leads to autoimmune disorders such as Crohn’s, colitis, thyroiditis, irritable bowel syndrome, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome, and arthritis.

Some lectins are definitely linked to certain autoimmune disorders – such as wheat to rheumatoid arthritis – but it remains a new area of study. Your best bet is to avoid lectins as much as possible.

All right, so how do lectins do this? When you normally eat food, all of the proteins are broken down into their basic amino acid building blocks and are then absorbed in your small intestine. Lectins are different. Instead of being broken down during digestion, they attach to the cells where nutrient absorption should be taking place. “Barring the door,” so to speak.

Usually, specific immune cells immediately take care of foreign bacteria and un-broken proteins. But lectins are like sneaky little Trojan Horses, they slip past your defenses and then make your intestines easier to penetrate PLUS they impair your immune system’s ability to close holes in your digestive track.

High amounts of lectins are found in all grains, soy, legumes, nuts, dairy, and nightshade plants. (Nightshade plants include eggplants, tomatoes, potatoes, and peppers)

And there are even more lectins in genetically modified foods, because additional lectins are added to increase “pest” resistance. (Yes, they genetically added things that cause your body to attack itself. Thank you, Monsanto!)

So, what can you do to minimize damage to your body from lectins?

First, stop eating the worst foods! This includes grains and soy for sure, but I would take out legumes and grain-fed dairy as well. Here is some more info on grains and soy:

Ok, once you’ve cut out grains, soy, and legumes, the next step is to eliminate all Genetically Modified Food (GMO). This can be tough to do at the supermarket, your best bet is to get friendly with your local farmer’s market and get local, natural food.

Next, diversify your diet. When you take away grains, soy, and legumes, most people get into a standard rotation of foods. 3 types of protein, 3 types of fruit, 4 kinds of vegetables, 1-2 kinds of nuts. The problem is that consuming only a small number of foods will maximize your sensitivity to any lectins (or allergens) in the food.

Studies have shown that mixing up your primary food sources will limit lectin damage, so a healthy diet based on low-lectin foods will minimize any damage caused by occasional higher-lectin sources.

And finally – this is very important – take care of your digestive system! Minimize use of antibiotics, take probiotics, eat prebiotics (garlic, onions, dandelion greens), get rid of ibuprofen, and de-stress.

Minimizing lectin damage is a big step towards improving your health and changing your body, so get started on the steps above right away!

Here’s a great tip for when you’re just starting out on your diet: Choose just two breakfasts.

In the first few weeks of a new eating plan, we get all excited and enthusiastic about how great things are going to be. We study all of our options and make a beautiful, varied, delicious menu for the week.

Stop it right there!!

Enthusiasm is great, but don’t sprint start only to run out of energy from all of the planning, shopping, and thinking of it all.

See, sometimes tons of choices just make things more difficult.

You can find a way to make it simple, delicious, and interesting all at the same time… Without losing your mind keeping track of everything.

Just choose two breakfasts from your new plan and practice them.

Alternate them or have them a few days in a row, either way is good.

What DOES matter is that these two breakfasts will become a part of your new eating mindset. Something that happens almost automatically so that you don’t have to expend any energy thinking about it, you just eat a healthy breakfast.

You can vary your choices once you’ve become a pro at breakfast – changing with seasonal foods or as your tastes change.

Eventually, you’ll have a few good breakfast choices that work for YOU and your eating plan. This makes planning and shopping easy and stress-free.

Since people always want to know what I eat, I have essentially the same thing for breakfast every day:

Now, obviously I’m a big guy, and very active, so this breakfast would be too much for most people, what’s important here is that I don’t have to plan a complicated menu, and don’t have to expend any mental energy on preparation.

On weekends – when I have more time – I go ahead and experiment with new recipes. Pork loin and apples, exotic sausages (ostrich, anyone?), paleo muffins with local honey. These experiments are fun, but during the hectic week I stick with the basics.

The take-home message for today is to: Find a breakfast or two that you like, and hang with it – don’t make things complicated early in the day